Hearing their cue, the Arizona Education Network responded by throwing as much mud in the water as possible. AEN claims that the JLBC numbers are inflated because they include a variety of non-education related spending, including "lunch money, after school sports, adult night programs, adjacent ways (sewer & road repairs as a result of city maintenance), and other non-revenue dollars."

I could wade into the weeds by noting that the free and reduced lunch program is funded for an educational purpose (the theory being that full stomachs improve learning), that the adult education budget is tiny, and that we do, in fact, build school buildings for an educational purpose. If not, let's not build any more.

But, there is another way to make this point. The JLBC also tracks Maintenance and Operations inflation-adjusted spending per pupil. M&O funding covers the basic day to day school spending. Not much, if any, of the money that the AEN claims inflates the spending numbers would make it into the M&O figures.

Between 2000 and 2009 Arizona M&O spending increased by 20 percent, the same percentage increase as overall education funding. Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that non-education spending is the main driver in the increased funding to our schools. As I mentioned above, while funding has gone up 20 percent, test scores have increased by less than 1 percent.

If you sent 20 percent more iron and coal to the mill and got less than 1 percent more steel, you would probably want to figure out what went wrong. Alternatively, you could place your hands over your eyes and call for more iron and coal.

Dr. Matthew Ladner is vice president for research at the Goldwater Institute.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

It is a shame that the Goldwater Institute continues to insist on using inflated educational funding statistics to validate their opinions.

Even Ladner's retort above is erroneous. The $346m in lunch money that he counts as 'education funding' comes from parents as well. Every check that I write for my child's lunch goes to the school district, which has to account for the incoming 'revenue', even though they just pass the funds to the company who provides the food service. It never, ever applies to our school's operational budget.

He also tries to blow off the 'adult education' funds as minor...but in my district the adult ed, community schools, day care and other non-school day related revenues equates to tens of millions of dollars. These funds are reported as 'Other' revenue on the Dept of Ed numbers...and they add up to $1.5 BILLION of the money Ladner is trying to claim.

This is ridiculous political slick math - and this kind of financial fudging undermines the integrity of the Goldwater Institute.